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Research Guides

Community Music

A guide for those studying Community Music at the University of Toronto

Boolean Operators

Boolean is a set of commands that can be used in almost every search engine, database, or online catalogue.  The most popular Boolean commands are ANDOR, and NOT.  Other commands include parenthesestruncation, and phrases.

Please see U of T's FAQs on Boolean Operators for additional information. 

Advanced Searching using AND

Advanced Searching using OR

Advanced Searching using NOT

Using Boolean command NOT in your search tells the search engine to give you results that contain the word(s) you entered except the word following NOT. 

Example

Psychology NOT Developmental:  any results that contain the word "psychology" will appear in your results list except those results that also contain the word "developmental".

Created by the University of Toronto Library, as part of the Boolean Searching FAQs. 

UTSC Library Catalogue

In order to search for books, go to the UTSC Library Catalogue

Select the "books" option in the upper righthand side:

Select the "Advanced Search" option. This will give you more control over your search.

Enter keywords in order to search for books that are relevant to your topic.

You may place limits on your search using:

  • Format (Book, DVD, CD, etc)
  • Language
  • Library Location
  • Number of results to be displayed

Refining your Search Results

Once you get your results, you can further refine them. With the example of China AND cinema, we got a total of 464 results. You can narrow these down using various facets, available on the left hand side of the screen. A popular way of narrowing results down is by "Library," and by "Subject."

You can also refine by other criteria, including: